Livia Medullina Camilla was, indeed, betrothed to the historical Claudius and, according to Suetonius, she died on the day they were to have been married. There is no historical evidence that it was a love-match (noble Roman marriages rarely were), or that her death was in any way unnatural. But by establishing her as the love of Claudius's life, and hinting that her death may have been by poison, Graves sets up a parallel with the doomed marriage of Tiberius and Vipsania Agrippina.